You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions." – Mark 7:8

 Today's Scripture Reading (November 21, 2020): Mark 7

Muslim Philosopher Al-Ghazali (1058-1111 C.E.) instructed his followers to "Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see - egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping and slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then you will be ready to fight the enemy you can see." Al-Ghazali has been described as the single most influential Muslim after Muhammad. And it is not just on Islam that he has left his mark. Through his influence on Christian figures like St. Thomas Aquinas, his wisdom has crossed over religious dividing lines into various areas of human existence.

Al-Ghazali's words of jihad threaten to put off any contemporary Christian listeners. We regard jihad as something that does not pertain to us. But I would argue that we need to hear the words of this Muslim philosopher; that the world would be in a much better place if we could just live out Al-Ghazali's instructions. Too many Christians do battle with the world without first doing battle with themselves. What would happen if Christians did declare our fight on the thirteen unseen enemies of our lives? What if we treated things like egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping, and slandering as the enemy of our souls and committed ourselves to their eradication from our lives before we decided to criticize the lives of others?  

Okay, if we were to declare jihad on the thirteen unseen enemies, we might not get around to ever declaring jihad on anything or anyone else. The battle against these thirteen enemies would be enough to fill a lifetime. And the reality is that it is the same thirteen enemies, the ones declared by Al-Ghazali, that stop the Christian from being a genuinely loving force in our world. Our thirteen unseen enemies usurp our power.

Jesus declares that we are stopped from accomplishing God's will because we give a higher place to human tradition than God. The actual Greek word that is used here is παράδοσις (paradosis), a teaching from tradition. We ignore what God directly instructs us to do because God's commands do not measure up with the precepts we have put into place in our own lives. And our reluctance to follow God is often a direct result of our thirteen unseen enemies. It is our ego that sets what we believe or want to believe above God's instruction. Our arrogance and conceit, and the strong desire within us to slander and gossip, stop us from being a force for the positive in this world.

Specifically, it is this human tradition of ignoring the thirteen unseen enemies that stop us from loving others the way that Jesus loved us. And until we declare war against our thirteen unseen enemies, we will never be able to love each other the way that Jesus instructed us to love. Instead, we will continue to allow human tradition to modify the commands of God – and in the end, we will accomplish nothing.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Matthew 16

See also Matthew 15:3